The bank provided financial
services for New York City's rising Irish Catholic immigrant population.
The bank provided easy transfer of funds between New York and Emigrant's
branch offices in Dublin.

The building is now used by the New York
City.

This office building, formerly
known as the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank Building, is located on
the north side of Chambers Street nearly midway between Broadway and Elk
Street, and extends back to Reade Street. It contains various city
government offices.

The Emigrant Bank was organized in 1850, under the auspices of Roman
Catholic bishop John Hughes and the Irish Emigrant Society, to protect
the savings of newly arrived Irish immigrants. In 1908 the bank
commissioned designs for a new building that would front both Chambers
and Reade Streets. This limestone-faced skyscraper in the Beaux-Arts
style was the first to be laid out on an H-plan, providing light and air
to almost all office spaces. The richly decorated banking hall has
marble walls and floors, bronze grilles, original tellers' cages, and a
series of stained-glass skylights with allegorical figures representing
mining, manufacturing, agriculture, and other modes of employment. [The
Guide to New York City Landmarks]

The City purchased the
building in 1965. It intended to use the site for a new Municipal
Building, which had been designed in the early 1960's but was never
built.

The Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank Building is a designated New York
City Landmark.